


Broken Souls

by neoqueentitania



Category: Sword Art Online (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst, Attempted Angst, I Made Myself Cry, I'm Sorry, M/M, Tragedy, eugeo dies, i've never actually written angst before so i hope this is okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:33:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22181866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neoqueentitania/pseuds/neoqueentitania
Summary: They say when your soulmate feels pain, you do too - nobody suffers alone. This poetic detail brings Kirito a realisation more painful than death itself, which he only wishes he could be so lucky to feel the relief of.
Relationships: Eugeo/Kirigaya Kazuto | Kirito
Comments: 23
Kudos: 74





	Broken Souls

**Author's Note:**

> I MADE MYSELF CRY SO NOW WE CAN ALL CRY TOGETHER.

_ No. _ It wasn’t meant to be like this. Something had gone terribly wrong. This isn’t what he wanted to happen, isn’t what he’d planned to happen. But it was real and happening and unfolding right before his terrified eyes while he couldn’t do anything but watch his best friend die. Die for  _ him _ .  _ He  _ was the cause of his pain, the reason one of the most important people to him was lying on the ground at his feet, bleeding out painfully.

“Eugeo!” He fell to his knees, clutching at his hand, desperately trying to feel a pulse. If he could find one, there was still a chance, he’d still make it. He had to, he  _ had  _ to. Kirito wouldn’t  _ let _ him die, not when they were so close to ending everything.

“It’s fine, I’m…  _ fine _ ,” Eugeo’s breath hitched as he struggled to breathe, and Kirito felt his stomach lurch forward once he saw the full extent of the damage. Eugeo was certainly dying, legs apart from his body, torso bleeding dangerously - fatally - quickly, blood covering the floor.

“No!” Kirito desperately tried pulling their bodies together, hoping, praying, that there was some way to stop the blood flow, maybe if he held him tight enough the blood would stop long enough for them to get help. Alice could get someone, maybe if they all screamed loud enough there would be someone to hear.

But there wasn’t anyone to hear, and they were losing Eugeo too quickly for him to be saved.

That’s when Kirito felt it. Something slicing through his middle, but when he looked down, fearful that the administrator had attacked him while his guard was down, there was nothing. No blade, no wound. Just blood across his shirt from his bleeding partner.

He tried to explain it, tried to think of some way to understand what was happening. Eugeo had accidentally hit him when he pulled him closer, a stray sword had flown past him and cut him, then fallen away before he noticed. No, nothing like that. The actual answer was far worse, far more tragic,  _ soul-crushing _ .

_ Eugeo was his soulmate _ .

He could remember hearing when he was young - in his other life, the other world he’d known before this one, before Eugeo - that when someone had a soulmate, they shared each other’s pain in an emotional, physical, and  _ literal _ sense. He’d brushed it off as an old fairytale that got too much infamy, never having experienced the pain Asuna felt, in Aincrad or Alfheim, despite there being plenty of occasions she’d been in harrowing pain. He put it down to virtual reality not being able to replicate the bond of soulmates, surely that was their issue. Asuna was his soulmate, his life. He’d never loved anyone like her. Until…

“ _ No! _ ” Kirito held Eugeo tighter against his chest, the blond’s skin losing colour and becoming darker with every passing second. Seconds that felt like an eternity as he watched his partner, friend -  _ soulmate _ \- die in his arms.

“Please… don’t cry,” Eugeo’s voice was hoarse, barely audible over the sound of Kirito’s sobs. Don’t cry? What kind of request was that? Was he supposed to remain stoic and composed while his entire reason for being and living and staying in this world and any other was practically lifeless?

“I will cry, dammit,” he responded, tears dropping to Eugeo’s cold, pale cheeks, “I  _ will _ cry, and I  _ will _ scream, and I  _ will  _ save you. That’s a promise, Eugeo.”

The raven-haired boy turned his head to look around the room, seeing Alice watching, frozen in abstract horror, then seeing Cardinal on the ground feet away from where he and Eugeo now were, then seeing the administrator, perched on her toes, watching in twisted delight as the scene unfolded in front of her.

“Administrator,” his voice was deep, dangerously cold and bone-chilling, “take me instead.”

“No!” Eugeo choked out, all-but-dead eyes widening in shock as far as Eugeo could force them open.

“Yes!” Kirito countered back. 

The pain tore through him, and he began crying again, knowing Eugeo felt the same pain and couldn’t do anything. How was he holding himself together? He was the one actually  _ dying _ . He couldn’t bring himself to move his arms from around Eugeo, though he desperately wanted to clutch his own stomach and let out strings of curses in both pain and frustration. But he couldn’t. Couldn’t let go of Eugeo like that, couldn’t let him die without being in his arms. If he had to go, Kirito would make sure that it wasn’t alone.

“ _ Dammit!”  _ Kirito practically roared, burying his face into Eugeo’s shoulder, sobbing against his skin as he felt his heartbeat slow against his own chest. Pain. All he could feel was the pain. His stomach hurt, his legs hurt, his chest hurt. More specifically, more noticeably, something within his chest hurt. The hurt that he’d never experienced, even through his hardships in Aincrad.

He’d lost his soulmate without even realising it was him.

What a cruel, twisted fate this world had forced upon him. Making a soulmate for him that perfectly balanced him out, completed him in every possible way and made him feel whole and contented in ways he never thought imaginable. Then to steal him away again without remorse or warning, leaving him with the knowledge that his real soulmate was lying lifeless in his arms, that the warmth he showed him would never come back. It was heartless, and Kirito desperately wished for his heart to stop, for him to die alongside him. What was the point of living now if not for Eugeo? To go back home to Asuna and his family? Where he now  _ knew _ he had no soulmate waiting for him? Go back into the arms of the woman he’d held so many times and tell her that she wasn’t  _ the one _ ? Break her heart into the shattered pieces he felt his breaking into? What was the point?

“Eugeo, stay with me,  _ please _ , I don’t want to lose you, I  _ can’t  _ lose you, I can’t live without you, I-”

“Kirito,” Eugeo’s voice was soft, breaths sharp and rattling in his chest in the most haunting sound Kirito could have imagined, each breath resonating in his own chest, “I… I won’t make it. Promise me… you… you’ll keep living… and stop the ad-”

He coughed sharply, Kirito desperately sobbing against him. No, no, please, not like this, not know. He  _ needed _ him.

“No, no, you’re leaving here with me, or I’m dying here with you!” His voice was desperate, breathless as he fought for the air Eugeo was losing.

“Stay cool… Kirito…” Eugeo’s eyes, now empty and soulless as Kirito stared at him helplessly, slowly closed shut, and Kirito screamed from the depths of his throat - depths of his  _ soul _ \- into the world. He wanted to die, die there with Eugeo and be reunited again. Nobody else mattered. They couldn’t have compared to the heartbreak he experienced as Eugeo’s body went limp under his fingertips.

“ _ Eugeo! _ ” He pleaded, voice breaking through sobs as the pain through his torso subsided, the final telling sign Eugeo was really gone. There was no point to his existence anymore.

“Administrator, bring him back!” Grief turned to rage, Kirito dropping Eugeo’s upper half to the ground as he charged towards the administrator, taking his sword from the floor as he went. But he missed his shot, her effortlessly dodging his feeble attempt.

He tried again, she stepped away again, smirking as Kirito endlessly tried to take revenge on her. Why did  _ she _ get to live when  _ Eugeo _ hadn’t? He kept aimlessly striking the air beside her as she avoided every attack, seemingly enjoying it as she watched him labouriously achieve nothing, too grief-stricken to attack seriously.

He vaguely heard Alice telling him to stop, felt her hands gripping his in an attempt to make him drop his sword, but he paid no attention. He could tell she’d taken the blade from him, dropping it to the floor as she pulled him down, sitting next to him as he wailed against the cold tile floors.

She couldn’t understand, nobody would understand. Eugeo would have understood, but there was no Eugeo left now. Eugeo was lying lifeless on the floor, eyes closed as if he was sleeping, blood still pooling around him. Kirito couldn’t even manage to crawl back over to him, instead, bringing his head to his knees and screaming with whatever strength he had left. At least Eugeo wasn’t around to see that, he didn’t want him to see him that way. He wanted Eugeo to forever remember him as his hero, his recklessly brave warrior who would do anything to protect him, even if it meant damning them both to whatever horrors the world would subject them to just so they could be together again. 

That’s how he’d remember Eugeo; the brave knight who would rather sacrifice himself and his future for the futures of those he loved. The cheery boy who loved everyone a little too deeply and fell a little too fast. The naive kid he’d grown up with and sworn to protect from the day they’d first met. The love of his life.  _ His soulmate _ .

“ _ Eugeo… _ ” 


End file.
